By William Markiewicz
(As other short items may follow, I've decided to group them together.)
Blocked in Contradiction (2/26)
Freedom (2/06)
The occupiers fight for oil, the occupied for freedom. In the West, the internet is full of anti-Christian blasphemous jokes and nobody takes to the streets. Media has all opinions from extreme right to extreme left. If the media doesn't publish offensive antiChristian material it is not because they are frightened but because few would buy it in a majority Christian country. Freedom of expression without risk is what democracy is about and let's hope it wont change.
Fear and greed are humankind's worst enemy. Therefore the war for oil is wrong. Censorship is wrong because it shows the censors are scared. Censorship will not eliminate hate just cause the haters to hide and so be more dangerous.
Re: Oligarchy (2/03)
I recently had a conversation with a fellow on a topic similar to the one mentioned in Issue 86, only he didn't try to outtalk me and also I didn't have the energy to debate as it was quite late. If the topic was the same -- Jewish conspiracy and power illustrated by the Jewish oligarchy in Russia -- my interlocutor added these details: "After the fall of Communism in Russia, the mostly Polish Jews who had spent WWII there, returned to Russia from America to profit from the chaos as those bureaucratic structures fell apart. They knew the language, they knew the local conditions, and they knew how to empty the vaults of billions, and escaped, leaving Russia ruined." I felt there was something wrong with this logic. The next day as I mulled it over, I recognized the main absurdity, strange to come from an otherwise intelligent man: those Jews spent the war in Russia as adults. Forty five years later they would be old men and certainly not the material to form an oligarchy. Their children and grandchildren surely don't know Russian. We don't know who robbed the Russian treasure but there's no shortage of Russian mafia.
Nobody denies that there is a Jewish success story in Russia, the U.S. and throughout the world. Why? And what about the Asians? They also are successful but nobody suspects them of conspiracy. They gather the fruits of their old culture, tradition, and ability to face challenges. Why not apply the same explanation to the Jews? They never formed a self-defence system during the Holocaust which proves that the Jews are more able to succeed as individuals than as a group. Besides this, even when we see a collective success, it's better to analyze each case individually to avoid confusion between investigation and demagogy.
"Shock of Civilizations" (1/20)
Chirac recently issued a warning that any state that initiates a terror attack against France risks retaliation through all means not excluding the nuclear one. He used the term "shock of civilizations." It doesn't mean that those who've previously used this term are correct in placing the whole current conflict between the West and the Islamic world in this category. The shock of civilizations was a grandiloquent excuse to start a war with Iraq and Afghanistan, while Chirac refers to specific local conditions, the French ones. There, a conflict of civilizations exists because of the large number of foreign immigrants united by Islam and opposed on many points to the local culture. The same situation, though less explosive, can be observed in other countries with large foreign immigration -- England, Germany, Italy, Belgium … All this results from previous demographic policy in those particular countries that needed mass manpower to handle the economic boom at that time. As I mentioned before, a similar situation existed in eleventh century Poland when it faced massive German immigration. Those Germans were numerous enough to revolt but not enough to win and they didn't cause problems for future generations because religion united them with the rest of the population. We face two explosive situations; one on a general level, caused by Western aggression and the other, local. If the terror risk for the U.S. and its allies is quite easy to stop by leaving Iraq and Afghanistan, the local conflicts will fester longer. The situation is aggravated by the fact that Europe has no multicultural tradition; almost all are inhabited by natives.
How to Maintain Eternal War (1/19)
-- by requiring the impossible. Bush refuses negotiations with terrorists, insisting on a fight to total victory. We all logically and intuitively know that such a victory is impossible. In one science fiction story a civilization on some planet was so advanced that it disinfected the oceans, meaning, in practice, it killed ocean life. Bush's plan amounts to disinfecting the continent to achieve a dead continent free of terror.
Israel requires the Palestinian authority to disarm the fighting groups. If I were a member of the Palestinian Authority I'd be tempted to reply, "Come and do it yourself." How can the P.A. be required to do what Israel cannot achieve with all its might? It amounts to requiring the P.A. to enter into war with its own population. You cannot dominate populations that have evolved beyond aboriginal conditions. Among the nations with advanced civilization, victory over a regime is possible but not over the total nation. Wars are never for "total victory" meaning perpetual occupation or perpetual Quisling regimes. If the U.S. and its allies quit Afghanistan and Iraq, if Israel quit the occupied territories as agreed in Oslo, the wars would die like a blown out candle. The West didn't invade Iraq and Afghanistan for ideology but for oil. The East, even its religious factions, doesn't fight for religion but for freedom. The dragons of fundamentalism are the unwanted offspring of prolonged and hopeless struggle.
The Gods of War Control Israel's Karma (1/06)
Rabin's murder interrupted a brilliant start towards peace. Sharon's change of heart to become a man of peace seemingly angered the gods of war. The anti-peace activists may use Israel's turmoil about Sharon's fate to initiate bloody terror acts with Israel's predictable kneejerk reaction. Never has the future of peace been so sombre.
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William Markiewicz